Published 4:00 am, Saturday, May 3, 2003

"The Gin Game" may not be Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore's only TV reunion. Plans are afoot for a one-hour special that would re-team "The Dick Van Dyke Show" cast under the direction of writer, creator and producer Carl Reiner.

Moore said earlier this year that she'd be interested in the project, and Van Dyke says he's game.

"Carl has called me a few times and said, 'I am having such fun writing this, I can't wait to show it to you,' " he said. "It's the story of Rob and Laura as they are today, but I have not seen anything yet. I've always had the feeling that you can't go back, but we'll see. If it's Carl writing it, I'll do it, because I trust him completely."

Before landing the lead in "The Dick Van Dyke Show," which ran from 1961 to 1966, Van Dyke had already put in nearly two decades as a show business everyman, hosting radio shows, playing nightclubs in a record-miming act called the Merry Mutes, anchoring CBS' morning program with Walter Cronkite and starring in the Broadway musical "Bye Bye Birdie."

"It was just the best five years of my life," says Van Dyke. "Sheldon Leonard, the show's producer, was this rather businesslike fellow, and he used to come watch us and say, 'Ah, the otters at play.' "

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Besides Van Dyke and Moore, the sitcom cast featured the late Morey Amsterdam, a former vaudeville comedian, and ex-child star Rose Marie as Rob Petrie's joke-slinging sidekicks. "It was a lot of creative pandemonium," Van Dyke recalls. "We rewrote every second, even during the shooting. Everybody could throw in lines or ideas, and Carl sifted through them -- it was definitely a group effort."

Van Dyke was often called on to improvise bits inspired by his childhood idols, silent film stars Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy.

"Carl never imagined anything physical in the character -- he'd written the part for himself originally -- but because I loved to do it, he allowed me to put in my shtick. Sometimes the script would just say, 'Dick does two minutes here,' and they left it to me to come up with it, which was so much fun."